Decadent review

Depending on their publishing schedule, most consumer and trade publications slate their reminiscing end-of-year, end-of-decade, end-of-century, end-of-millennium reviews for late December or early February editions. This typically means they skip any of the monumental stuff that may blossom, explode or implode in December because they’re compiling their lists, checking them twice and writing about their observations in November!

Even if nothing happens in December, it’s still a “diss” to the month and a disservice to you, dear readers.

Not to worry. Healthcare Purchasing News is not so dismissive.

So here’s our – more accurately, my – top 10 key healthcare supply chain developments and trends in the last decade, in no particular order.

Quality Activism. Thanks to the Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report on medical errors, many healthcare organizations, including hospitals, group purchasing organizations and even The Joint Commission itself, reinvigorated efforts to improve quality and safety. The emergence of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the Leapfrog Group, and RID, among others, only fueled the movement without fanning flames of hysteria. The capstone? CMS declaring it no longer will reimburse for mistakes. Seriously.

GPO Hotseat. Ever since President Ronald Reagan granted the GPO industry an antitrust “get out of jail free” card competing provider and vendor groups over the years consistently have tried to knock them off the Monopoly game board. A Congressional subcommittee threw its hat into the three-ringed circus in 2002, accomplishing little beyond publicity, but seemingly motivating the industry to police itself.

Dot-Com Collapse. The meteoric rise of online purchasing exchanges at the dawn of the millennium upset the industry more than job security fears during the Columbia/HCA-inspired market consolidation wave in the mid-to-late 1990s. But their subsequent flameout barely two years into the decade generated many sheepish glances as post-collapse analysis weighs whether the industry was more concerned about process efficiency or profit quickening.

Distributor Convergence. The medical/surgical distributor consolidation wave during the previous decade united medical devices with pharmaceuticals, leaving the industry with four horsemen. The subsequent decade unraveled that momentum a bit as three of the major players divested their med/surg distribution operations to return to concentrating on drug distribution, leaving one as the clear market leader. Ironically, the last man standing jettisoned its drug distribution roots in the 1960s and apparently never glanced back.

Hybrid Healthcare. Forget about integrated delivery networks. IDNs were so 1990s. Integrated healthcare during the last decade focused more on developments within the modern surgical suite with the fusion of imaging, information technology, oncology and laboratory fortifying the multi-functionality of the operating room, a must during lean economic times. True efficiency involves not having to move the surgical patient to various locations for selected procedures but instead be able to perform them in one place, live, if necessary. And then hope that medical records, including billing catches up. Or maybe not.

Disaster Planning. Within hours of the 9/11 attacks in New York City, the healthcare supply chain’s importance to operations seemed that much more critical and crucial. Why? Authorities literally clamped all arteries into the Big Apple, shutting down access and briefly crippling supply lines before official clearance grants. Apparently forgetting the World Trade Center underground parking garage bombing in 1993 and the Oklahoma City federal building bombing two years later, healthcare organizations suddenly made planning for supply chain breakdowns everywhere de rigueur. And let’s not forget about hurricane season, along with mudslides, tornadoes and wildfires.

CS/SPD United. While a thorny issue for several decades, the merging of the two professional associations representing and serving the nation’s valuable central service experts came close to happening a decade ago. But it needed another decade to foment. 

Imaging Ignition. Attending the massive Radiological Society of North America conference during the post-Thanksgiving week only illustrated how far technology has developed for clinicians to visualize bones, organs and tissue. From high-speed, helical, multi-slice and volumetric computed tomography (CT) to larger bore magnetic resonance imaging, souped-up ultrasound and the debut of next-generation modes, clinicians can see far more anatomical and physiological detail now than ever before. Too bad the momentum was interrupted by economic collapse.

Oncology Options. Just as with imaging technology, the equipment used for detecting, treating and excising cancer expanded beyond drugs and scalpels with more advanced radiation therapy machines to attack only diseased tissue with highly focused energy beams in minimally and non-invasive ways. With cancer a leading cause of death as well as the rise of standalone cancer treatment centers allegedly siphoning off lucrative patients from hospital revenue streams, supply chain managers have been introduced to a new lexicon that includes such terms as intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), adaptive radiotherapy and the basics of linear accelerators.

Pandemic Prepping. From SARS to swine flu (and whatever happened to the bird flu?) pandemics (depending on how loosely you define the term) exposed kinks and weak links in the supply chain that should have been solved in all of those disaster planning meetings.